Do They Care It’s Christmas?

The black and white television started glowing after the click of its on knob was turned. Shadowy figures of white people started filling in the screen as the generator 15 feet away filled the air with a fetid cocktail of noxious gases and a steady ‘k-k-k-k-k-k-k’ sound.

My stomach was empty and had been for the last three days, but these few minutes of watching TV was the highlight of my day and took my mind off the gnawing hunger in my distended Kwashiorkor ravaged belly.  The flies buzzing about looked quite succulent, feeding as they were on the generalized human misery and waste in our refugee camp. We were too weak to chase these insect fighter jets though so we allowed them free access to the numerous sores on our faces, arms, and legs, a privilege they undertook with not a little gusto.

My mother had died a few days ago and I didn’t care. I didn’t know who my father was, although I remembered a man with a very large gun who would stop into the hut where my seven brothers and sisters eked out an existence in the place I’d been told was Ethiopia. He would always bring food and other gifts for my mother, but he would leave again after one night. I think he was my father. Nine months after every night, my mother gave birth to another one of my brothers and sisters.

But she was dead and along with her, two of my sisters and one of my brothers. Never mind that now, tonight I was going to watch the UN-provided TV that brought shows from far away places for us to watch as long as there was fuel in the generator. Children from all over the camp would be allowed to sit near the TV in a rare show of courtesy by the emaciated Big People. Normally they treated the children like slower flies, swatting at us as we wandered the camp and throwing stones and evil words at us. I think the White People whose TV it was made the adults behave a bit better, but I can’t be sure.

The White People smelled of sweat, cigarette smoke, and patchouli. They were very nice, always trying to help us. There were even some White People doctors who would arrive once in a while and treat the worst wounds on the women and children, but they would leave again just as suddenly as they showed up, like Angels returning home to heaven. The wounds would get pretty bad again within a day or two so people soon stopped going to see the White People doctors when they showed up. They either lived with the pus, odor and the ever-present flies or would pack the sores over with mud if the flies got unbearable. Every so often, the legs would have to be cut off and more often lately, the people just died and their bodies were taken away. That seemed to clear the air for a bit afterwards.

The White People’s TV could only run once a week, because of the scarcity of gasoline for the generator but tonight was the designated TV-watching night! I looked around me and saw a mass of coal black children, men and women. Slack-jawed and listless, the only sign of life was the light in their eyes reflected back from the TV in the inky night. As long as there’s life, there’s hope is what I’ve heard people in our camp say again and again, but now that people were dying at an ever faster rate, I had started to doubt whether this saying was totally true.

I was interrupted by the sound from the television set. On the flickering screen, a thin white man with wild, bushy hair led other strange-looking white people—although if I squinted, I could make out one or two other people who were black like me—in a song about Christmas. The White People later told me this was a very, very, special thing we had seen on the TV. The thin white man with wild hair was a good and wise man named Bob Geldof. The other strange white people singing to the accompaniment of bells and drums were singing to make our lives better because of Christmas. I didn’t know what Christmas was and I didn’t understand how a song about it could make our lives better, but I had long ago stopped thinking too hard about what White People did, so we all just nodded and hoped they had some grain for us coming soon, a thought which kick-started the hunger pangs afresh.

With tears in their eyes, the camp’s White People wanted to make sure we understood that Bob Geldof and the others were really going to change our situation for the better now that the whole world knew about us and what was happening to us. The listed all the people who were singing, saying these were very important singers; I kept hearing them talk about a man named Sting, but as I knew no one was stupid enough to be named for the dangerous end of a TseTse fly, I decided I had heard wrong. It seemed these White People had called their group Band Aid, and the camp’s White People looked at us with a knowing smile dancing on their faces, as if they expected us to understand what Band Aid meant. After some adults said they did not understand what the Band Aid was, the White People explained that it was something white people put on cuts and scrapes. I looked down at the two-inch wide, half-inch deep sore on my right foot and, swatting away feeding flies, tried to imagine how big a band aid would need to be to cover it.

I wondered if, now that Band Aid had sung about Christmas, we would receive a bowl of millet once a day instead of once a week. I wondered if they would send in fresh water so that I did not have to drink water from the well in the camp. I tried not to drink that water because, as if on a timer, within five minutes of taking one sip, I would have to drop the cloth around my waist and start pissing out of my anus. I tried very hard not to drink that water.

For five months we waited for Band Aid to come out of the white aeroplanes that landed on the hardened red earth two miles from the camp. I wanted to see if Bob Geldof looked anything like the wild haired, goat-looking man on the TV. I thought maybe I could ask if Sting was his real name. But after two months, I began to get a feeling they would not arrive and by month four, turned by attention elsewhere. By this time, the only food I ate were bits of raw wheat on the floor of my shanty. The wound on my foot was now covering almost my entire foot so I couldn’t run to get the millet the White People brought in and I couldn’t go see the white doctor when she came to the camp a few weeks after that.

The night I died was cold, I remembered. The hunger had settled in now and was like an ever-present companion, the puppy dog I had always wanted. That’s what I called it—my puppy dog—because it growled and growled. The wound on my foot had stopped throbbing and all at once, I got nice and warm—which was weird, I thought because it was so cold. Out in the center of the camp, the old TV must have been turned on because I heard the now-familiar “bong, bong” of the opening bars, Band Aid was about to Feed The World. Ah, what a nice song. It was the only White People’s song I had ever heard in my life and it had grown on me. Now that I could understand some of the words, they were comforting:

It's Christmas time
There's no need to be afraid
At Christmas time
We let in light and we banish shade
And in our world of plenty
We can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around the world
At Christmas time

Ah, such nice words from such nice people. I pushed my mother’s sleeping cloth back down, I was so warm. Then I went to sleep.

Feed the world
Feed the world
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again